Hello,
I had a case of acute tinnitus and ear pain from January to March this year. I attend quite a lot of concerts so I’m sure this was the primary cause although my case of tinnitus only started after I had to get my ear flushed out in January. My ears and hearing have been completely fine since March.
There is a concert coming up in a few months that I really want to go to but, of course, I don’t want any form of tinnitus or ear pain to come back and I definitely don’t want to cause any permanent damage to my ears. At the same time, I am only 16 and I really want to be able to go to concerts again.
Anyway, do you think it would reasonable to go to a concert again in a few months or do you think it is too risky? What ear protection would you recommend wearing?
Thanks for any input!
You should look into ear plugs made for listening to music. There may be more credible sources of information on them, but here is what I found on a quick look.
Please take the advice of wearing ear plugs for music. You see guys at concerts hanging out right in front of the stacks of speakers for the band, that was me when I was young. Im paying for it now with moderate to sever hearing loss in both ears and now have to wear hearing aids. Concerts are great and I dont regret going to them at all, I just regret not taking the advice of people telling me about the damage I was doing to me hearing.
Definitely, definitely wear ear plugs!!! As posted above there are plenty designed for listening to loud music now rather than just the foam ones to sleep on planes. Take care using earphones as well, and use the volume limiter if your device has one. You can still continue to enjoy live music but the tinnitus may be the first warning that you need to protect your ears from further damage, I still remember which gig caused my tinnitus to become permanent, I was only 20
Use hearing protection when around any loud sounds. Trust me on this, you do not want a lifetime of limited hearing, saying what? What did he say? Missing the punch line. Missing dialogue of movies. Mistaking lyrics of songs (well, OK, sometimes that’s pretty funny).
Hearing loss separates you from people and you start avoiding certain things because you know you can’t catch every word.
Then there is the ringing. The incessant, tortuous ringing. Oh it starts off as an almost pleasant whooshing sound but it will eventually turn on you, and turn into a whooshing / fingernails on the board / electronic static kind of thing (that’s what I have now).
Concerts sound just as good with good quality earplugs. Wear them every time.
A good quality earplugs will do the trick. But be cautious, stay as far as possible from the speakers. Even in your day to day activities, if you going someplace loud. I recommend you wear earplugs and don’t listen to music through earphone for a long period of time.
Yeah, I don’t go to concerts without earplugs. Otherwise, I’ll just go deaf. But you only need special earplugs that reduce the sound, not block it completely.
In my case (I’m an old guy) concerts had a different meaning than today. Live music for me was in a concert hall. Didn’t need earplugs. But I like my recorded music, from a good audio system, in a small room, loud! Maybe that’s a good reason why I’m here talking hearing aids.
Custom musicians earplugs are great and exactly what you need. They aren’t cheap. You can get them from an audiologist. They are custom fitted to your ear canal and come in different amounts of cut. I have the 15db ones and those are perfect for me for live concert music and they were about $300 several years ago when I got them. They aren’t like the foam plugs and don’t cut all frequencies equally like some other ones do. Normal level sounds like conversations are not effected at all. They only squash the loud sounds and are about as natural sounding as you’re going to get for ear plugs.
I wear RIC Hearing Aids with tulip tips. I was surprised to find by trying that I could wear both the earplugs and the hearing aid at the same time. It was a bit tight with one touching the other, so I trimmed just a bit off the part that goes into the ear canal with a razor blade and now I can can wear both at the same time. The receiver wire doesn’t affect the ear plug seal at all. So, I don’t have to take out my Hearing aids to put them in. With loud, but not extremely loud music, I keep the hearing aids at the lowest volume or so to still get some high frequencies. If the music is loud, I just mute them and use just the ear plugs. When the music stops I can take out the plugs or just turn the hearing aids back on.
I haven’t been to any concerts in a while with the pandemic, but I’ll use them again when life starts to get back to normal.
Remember also that isolation caused by not interacting with people increases the risk of dementia in later life.
Is it ok if, at concerts, I wear hearing aids (turned off) with big power domes that occlude my ears completely? They seem to work like ear plugs to me.
Or do I still need ear plugs for better protection?
Thanks!
Most of the musicals/concerts I attend I’ve already seen at least twice before so I know most of the songs, which is a big help.
Like we went to Sister Act at the Lyceum on Wednesday, that was brilliant.
Planning to attend another show in a couple of weeks.
“Concerts?” I assume from the discussion that this means ‘rock’ concerts. Just a reminder, everybody. . . .there are other kinds of music played in public for audiences! I, for example, regularly attend chamber music concerts–that means strings, keyboard, even horns–playing classical music. That, too, can present listening challenges; the music is often performed in venues not ideal for acoustics.